Week 51, 2024
I’ve had the most extraordinary week.
From what looked like what was going to be a very slow end to December, this last week blossomed into a rather incredible — and positive — surprise.
Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to work with 35 undergrads from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University, helping them learn the ins and out of storytelling and investor pitching.
On Monday — and then again on Friday — I was honored to work with a delegation of senior government officials from #Bhutan, many of them leaders at Druk Holding & Investments Limited (DHI), the Bhutanese government’s investment arm, talking about building a startup ecosystem, creating awareness around mental wellness and then finally, summing up a week’s worth of work focusing on Enterprise Risk Management.
And sandwiched in between, I was part a panel discussion at Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Law discussing the legal implications of ESG (from a startup perspective) for a delegation of visiting student’s from Vietnam’s University of Law, Hue University.
2024 hasn’t been the best of years for many people — the elections in the US, the ongoing wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, political instability in Western Europe, increasingly dramatic climate events… I know that many of my friends are feeling less than optimistic about the world and what 2025 might bring.
While I can safely say that I’m not terribly pessimistic, I wasn’t feeling particularly optimistic either. But this week changed that…
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I was surrounded by dozens of young(er), energetic, optimistic people committed to building better communities, businesses and nations for themselves and others.
They were all working hard to learn new skills, obtain new knowledge and try out new ideas, with a common vision of making things better for the world.
I’m not often humbled, but this week certainly made me a bit more so, when I experienced the positive purpose and energy generated by these 3 groups.
It was also hard to ignore that this energy and commitment was not coming from people from “the West” but rather from other emerging/emergent countries in Asia.
For an American, even one who has lived in Asia for 30+ years, this was another reminder of the bigger world out there, where great ideas can come from anywhere, not just Washington or California.
It’s difficult to avoid the cliches or sounding pollyannaish here, but I came away feeling a lot more positive about the world and its future than I did going into the week. And that’s kind of a nice way to wrap up a bittersweet 2024, wouldn’t you say?
Special thanks to Pietro Borsano and Charlton L. from the Chulalongkorn BAScii program; Dr. Pradeep Kumar Dash and Faiz H. Shah from the Yunus Centre AIT ( Asian Institute of Technology); and Claire Cheong at NUS Enterprise Academy Summer Programme in Entrepreneurship (National University of Singapore) for making this week so great.
#optimism #learning #2025 #positivity
#BetterCallPaul
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
